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The petite girl, long brown hair pulled back into a pony tail, dimples flashing, lifts one leg and steadies herself on the other as she steals a glimpse of how she looks in the wall-length mirror.

It’s a scene you’d see in any dance studio.

But suddenly, with a staccato thwack-thwack-thwack, she snaps her elevated leg at the kicking pad with speed and precision. The blows land so hard the boy holding the pad is pushed back a step before bracing himself for another onslaught.

This is no ballet class.

Gesenia Abenoja-Barrios tried that more traditional activity and dismissed it as “a little boring.”

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Instead, at 9, she is in her fifth year at Lanna MMA, a martial arts school in an industrial complex on Weston Rd. On this day she is working on Muay Thai, a combat sport that involves striking with feet, shins, knees, elbows and fists. It is one of the disciplines used in the mixed martial-arts promotion known as the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

One day Gesenia hopes to fight in the UFC.

“There are girls in UFC and I’d like to be like one of them. One day I feel I’ll be better than I am right now,” she says during a break. “I’m not afraid of getting hurt — well, maybe a little.”

Call it an evolution or a validation but UFC — the almost-anything-goes, often bloody brawling in a cage once famously decried as “human cockfighting” by U.S. Senator John McCain — has become so mainstream that significant numbers of parents encourage their children to get involved in mixed martial arts.

Children who, a generation ago, might have dreamed of being the next Wendel Clark or Joe Carter are now looking to the likes of Georges St. Pierre and Anderson Silva from the UFC’s Octagon as their role models, heroes of a sport that was banned in Ontario until 2010.

“MMA has now been around for 20 years. The next generation has already accepted it and embraced it for the values it provides and the excitement that it shows,” says Tom Wright, director of operations for UFC Canada. “They’re making those decisions for their children. It’s a natural evolution and maturation of a sport and its acceptance.”

Wright says that on a per-capita basis, Canadians consume UFC — live, on line, on pay per view and in other media — more than any other nation. When the first UFC event was staged in Toronto at the Rogers Centre on April 30, 2011, such was the pent-up demand that 42,000 tickets were sold on the first day of availability — and a UFC record crowd of 55,724 eventually assembled under the dome to become part of history.

“Like it or not,” says Wright, “I’ve never been to an NHL game where a fight has broken out and the entire crowd wasn’t standing up and screaming. I think Canadians have always liked a good fight. It’s fundamental to our DNA.”

Tonight’s UFC 165 at the Air Canada Centre — headlined by a light heavyweight championship match between Jon (Bones) Jones and Alexander (The Mauler) Gustafsson — will be a frenzied gathering of the converted.

However, not measured at the turnstiles or in pay-per-view buys is the sport’s growing popularity at the grassroots level.

Neither UFC Canada nor the Council of Amateur Sport Kickboxing (CASK), the body that regulates mixed martial arts in Canada, has hard numbers of how many Toronto gyms offer training in MMA. But google it and you’ll find pages of listings, and most of those clubs offer a program for children.

At Lanna MMA, owner and head instructor Mel Bellissimo says he has 90 children registered between the ages of 3 and 12. The cost for instruction and using the gym is about $100 per child per month.

The UFC has toned down some of the unseemly gore that characterized its early days by introducing weight classes and clarifying rules — “It’s evolved from spectacle to sport,” says Wright — and taken strides to ensure better health for its fighters. The UFC rule book lists 31 fouls — including eye gouging, biting, hair pulling and groin attacks of any kind — that result in penalties. Even McCain conceded in 2007 that he no longer considered it human cockfighting.

Still there are vocal critics of a sport in which opponents are allowed to, for example, use choke holds or knees to the face.

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) has called for an outright ban on mixed martial arts in this country and current CMA president Dr. Louis Francescutti says it’s a “no-brainer” to hold steady on that stance.

“The last thing we want is for any activity that will increase the likelihood that somebody is going to be hurt. When the whole purpose of mixed martial arts is to kick, punch or otherwise pummel your opponent to the point where they are incapacitated, then it’s obvious that somebody is going to get injured,” he says. “The goal is go out and replicate the days of gladiators, beat up your opponent and win the prize money.”

Paul Dennis, the former Maple Leafs’ player-development coach, is a high-performance coach at York University who has lectured extensively on concussions on behalf of Hockey Canada. Dennis says he admires and endorses all the benefits that flow from martial arts training including discipline, self-esteem and perseverance.

“But I think all that is neutralized once they go into the ring to compete and their brain becomes vulnerable to serious injury,” he says. “I love the concept for training but I don’t understand why anyone would put themselves in a position where they could suffer serious brain damage.”

Dennis says he would like to see UFC banned and is particularly troubled when young people regard the fighters as role models.

“If (the children are) in there for all the benefits I mentioned, it’s positive and its healthy, but if they’re in it because mom and dad want them to become the next alpha male, I think it could be a serious problem,” he says. “I know it’s incredibly popular but I think it sets a precedent for nothing but future catastrophic injuries amongst our youth.”

Bellissimo challenges those who are critical of teaching MMA to children to visit a gym. The vast majority of his students, he says, have no intention of competing. They are there for fitness, confidence and self-growth. The gym’s motto, posted in large letters, is “Respect, Hard Work, Honour.”

“Don’t look at 15 seconds (of UFC) on television and then make a judgment,” he says. “Come to a place like Lanna MMA and watch what the kids do. And you tell me whether or not this is about violence or whether this is about learning and making words like respect, honour and hard work not just words but words to live by.”

The gym does stage martial arts exhibitions but the contact is light and competitors wear head guards, mouth guards, pads on the body and shins, and 16-ounce gloves he says are “like pillows.”

“They might as well be wearing bubble wrap,” says instructor Dave Mirabelli, noting that those competitions are strictly voluntary. “We get parents who come in and one of the first thing they’ll say is, ‘Is my child going to have to fight?’ Absolutely not. Never. That’s something later on in your martial arts career if you choose to pursue it.”

A day at the gym

On a typical late afternoon at the gym, parents sit along the walls watching while their children take part in exercises or listen to instructors talk about paying attention or leadership.

Any striking is against pads, they are told. Walk away from an altercation if you’re being bullied. Anyone who is found to be using their combat skills outside the gym is suspended for a week or banned.

There is lots of laughter here. The kids work hard but the environment is calm and relaxed.

But what about the small percentage of kids who want to doff the protective gear one day and step into the UFC’s Octagon? Are they, as Dennis says, making themselves vulnerable to catastrophic injuries?

The medical association’s Francescutti says there is no accurate reporting of injuries relative to each sport but “if you’re going to get repeatedly punched to the head and kicked to the head, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the likelihood of concussion is great.”

Dana White, who heads the UFC, counters by saying, “We’ve never had a death or serious injury in the 20-year history of the UFC.”

The British Journal of Sports Medicine reviewed five years of sanctioned MMA fights in Nevada from 2002 to 2007 — 635 fights — and found 300 of the 1,270 participants suffered injuries, mostly lacerations and injuries to the upper limbs. It found that 3 per cent of matches resulted in a concussion and concluded “the overall risk of critical sports-related injury seems to be low.”

White says if a UFC fighter suffers a concussion, he or she must sit out 90 days and then be cleared by an independent doctor before returning to competition.

“Could you imagine the NFL doing that? Making (quarterbacks) Tom Brady or Peyton Manning sit out for 90 days?” asks White, adding that it is hard to make the argument that UFC fighting is “barbaric” and dangerous.

As for kids pursing mixed martial arts, White says its popularity is understandable because children have grown up watching it with their parents.

“People are used to it,” he said. “The kids that are growing up now are growing up with the UFC.”

Francescutti believes that by getting the kids involved, UFC is “trying to normalize something that’s not normal.”

“It’s pretty amazing that a big segment of our society thinks it’s OK to have activities like this,” he says.

Gesenia is at Lanna MMA most evenings after school. So is her 7-year-old brother, Isaiah, and her sister, Precious, who is 4. Their parents, after seeing the benefits of the workouts, have started training here.

Denisse Barrios, the children’s mother, says Gesenia was once so shy that part of the reason she quit ballet was that she was afraid of performing at the end of the session. Now she bubbles with confidence. Isaiah, who had a speech impediment, used to take out his frustrations by hitting himself when he couldn’t pronounce words. Now he is channelling those energies into martial arts. Like his sister, he now carries himself with confidence. His speech issues have disappeared and he no longer hits himself.

“It gives them patience, it gives them listening skills, respect for others and a better understanding of the importance of hard work,” says Barrios.

“They’ve also become more responsible, especially at home, cleaning up after themselves. It helped them to express themselves, even toward new people. They don’t hide behind me any more. They have big-time confidence.”

Barrios says she would “love” to see her kids compete in the UFC one day.

“I told my kids, whatever you want to be, I’m behind you 100 per cent. And if you want to be in the UFC one day, I’m there. Your No. 1 fan, I told them. It’s very violent, yes, but if it is something my kids have decided on when they’re older I will give them 100-per-cent support.”

“You make your choice. If you want to be a professional, you have to work hard and if you really want it, if that’s what you really love, you should go for it.”

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